Christian Science practitioners are trying to get spiritual healing to be paid for in the Health Care Reform bill:
The calls come in at all hours: patients reporting broken bones, violent coughs, deep depression.
Prue Lewis listens as they explain their symptoms. Then Lewis — a thin, frail-looking woman from Columbia Heights — simply says, "I'll go to work right away." She hangs up, organizes her thoughts and begins treating her clients' ailments the best way she knows how: She prays.
This is health care in the world of Christian Science, where the sick eschew conventional medicine and turn to God for healing. Christian Scientists call it "spiritual health care," and it is a practice they are battling to insert into the health-care legislation being hammered out in Congress.
Leaders of the Church of Christ, Scientist, are pushing a proposal that would help patients pay someone like Lewis for prayer by having insurers reimburse the $20 to $40 cost.
The provision was stripped from the bill the House passed this month, and church leaders are trying to get it inserted into the Senate version. And the church has powerful allies there, including Sens. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), who represents the state where the church is based, and Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah), who said the provision would "ensure that health-care reform law does not discriminate against any religion."
What do you think of that? Would you be OK with acupuncture? macrobiotics? “natural healing” techniques? (I don’t know if the bill would cover those treatments or not. Does anyone know? Do most insurance companies? Do any insurance companies cover “alternative medicine”?)
{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }
That is really the crux of the problem, isn’t it — people wanting other people to pay for their health care but ignoring the fact that this means other people are making the choices, often counter to what you think is best.
Maybe they could also pay us for our sermons. More govermnment gone crazy.
Paying for prayer?
That just seems wrong.
Some desperate people might pay for “spiritual healing”, but any one who would charge for such services is akin to Simon the Sorcerer.
Most pastors make house calls to the sick in their congregation, and don’t charge anything. Or you can go to their office at the church. I don’t know a pastor who won’t drop everything to pray with a congregant in need. How about prayer services, which most churches hold at least once a week? Or prayer lists or phone or email prayer trees, which most churches also have?
Insurance works best when it covers only catastrophic costs anyway. Our health care system wouldn’t cost half as much if we didn’t file reimbursement forms for every $20 to $40 cost we incurred. If you want to go pay to have someone pray for you, or stick needles in you, or manipulate your back, or give you a pill, then do it. But don’t ask others to reimburse you for it. And don’t waste the time of our government by whining about how these types of things should be covered. Man up!
We have to stop calling this “health” care. What doctors and hospitals deliver is services for the sick. The problem for these alternative things–some of which are quite potently effective–are that they are meant to prevent serious illness. Once the serious stuff turns up, they are largely useless. And the tendency to be associated with New Age or ancient religious healing is very off-putting for most folks. I live near Madison, where there is a natural healing outfit on just about every corner these days. It is becoming a very big business, so I am not surprised that people who opt to use these things (we do to some extent: chiro, organic food almost exclusively, etc.) and find themselves using them INSTEAD of hospitals and modern medicine, would be thinking, “Hmmm…”…
I spent my life as an electronic designer and microcomputer programmer, a very hard science type. In 1995 I was healed of a serious and likely fatal medical condition through the silent prayer of an employee, who was a lifelong Christian Scientist. The healing involved total removal of all symptoms in less than 24 hours, they just were not there anymore, as well as a sense of peace and elevated thought that I would never have believed possible. I have heard descriptions of near death experiences that sound similar to what I experienced, a sense of total good and that there is nothing to fear.
I began studying Christian Science as a result of that experience, and have since used it to heal a broken foot with no medical involvement of any kind, allergies, work injuries, and many other conditions. My retirement project is a shrub and tree nursery, and I do hard physical work every day. At age 69 I am in perfect health and doing things easily that I could not have done at all at age 55.
Christian Science Prayer is different in several subtle ways from what most people think of as prayer.
Christian Science taps natural laws that are as real as Ohm’s law. Just because most people are not aware of them doesn’t mean they are not present and active.
Christian Science is the best kept secret of the age. It really works.
REI (@6), would you care to expound on what those “natural laws” are that Christian Science taps into? How would you state them?
And how is “Christian Science prayer” different from “what most people think of as prayer”?
To sum it up with an analogy from my own life experience, we are living in the ultimate virtual reality game. We were alive before we came here, and will be alive after we go through what is commonly called death. We are actually spiritual beings, having a human experience.
One of the laws that most newcomers find most difficult to grasp is that there is no matter. What we think of as matter is purely a creation of our mortal mind. Since it is a projection of our thought, it can change instantly when our thought changes, and what seemed material and solid changes instantly. I have seen this happen numerous times.
I once accidentally crushed a hornet’s nest and was swarmed with many bites. I realized I couldn’t outrun them so I closed my eyes and began to pray. In about a minute I opened my eyes and saw the hornets crawling around on their ruined nest, completely ignoring me. I resumed walking and praying and within five minutes all evidence of the bites was gone, as well as the pain. The bites had swollen and were very painful before my prayer removed them from my experience.
A major law is the law of creational perfection. God did create everything in the universe, and his creation is perfect. That perfection is the underlying truth, which can be obscured by human thought. By aligning ourselves with God, we can see perfection expressed in place of any seeming problem.
Christian Science Silent Prayer doesn’t ask God to set aside his laws and grant the supplicant a special favor, it is an attempt to align our thought with God and know that the appearance of a problem can’t be the truth.
Mary Baker Eddy, the discoverer of Christian Science, specifically forbade formulas. She believed they would lead to ritualism and prevent people from actually finding a link to God. She set out her ideas in the Christian Science Textbook, Science and Health With Key To The Scriptures.
This is the source book that everyone who wants to know more should read. IMO, the best book ABOUT Christian Science is Spiritual Healing In A Scientific Age by Peel. For a quick take, read from page 16 to the end of the chapter and then read the material starting on page 54.